Exploring the artist's studio

There is an introspective air to the drawings and paintings that make up this show. With one exception, they are fairly intense explorations of the world of the studio: the room itself with its block walls, the easel, props such as couch and bed, plants from the garden outside, postcard reproductions of paintings on the walls, self-portraits of the artist, together with studies of his wife and baby son, plus one or two other people.

Many of the pictures have the heavy irregular surfaces that hint at layer on layer of underpainting. It is as if each spell at the easel is a new bid to get the subject. That is to say it's not a cumulative process, a matter of building up an image bit by bit. Rather, each layer obliterates the failed one beneath. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Miller's final drafts are not conspicuously "finished". They abound in rough edges, brusque approximations, impatient gestures: the antithesis of well-made pictures in the academic sense. They are well-made in another sense, though. Miller's emphasis is on capturing the truth of the encounter between painter and subject. That much-discussed property, presence, is effected in a surprisingly straightforward way, rather than through some feat of magical insight. It's not a question of glimpsing a person's inner soul, just a matter of being true to the moment, or to the hours, of being there making the painting.

Such concentration in terms of method and selection of work engenders a note of austerity, though that could equally be a product of the dominance of grey in the palette. There is actually plenty of colour in the paintings but it is usually toned down several notches in the studio's even, calming light.

Keeping to such a tight, subdued thematic agenda was something of a gamble but spend some time with the work, soak up its atmosphere, and you'll see that the gamble pays off.